[CHAPTER XVI]
FORMING THE TRACK TEAM
As though resolved that the Boreas should rest for a while on her laurels, the weather changed that night within the hour and when morning dawned there was a warm southwest wind blowing up the river. That afternoon Dick took Harry for a sail, but the wind by that time had died down to a thin, warm breeze that scarcely filled the sails, and in consequence the trip was not an exhilarating one. But exhilarating or otherwise, it proved to be practically the last of the season, for the warm weather held until the ice-cracks, air-holes and expanses of rotten ice which quickly developed made ice-boating at once dangerous and unpleasant. To be sure, there were occasional trips, but the river never returned to a state making possible another race between the Boreas and the Snowbird, a race which Joe Thurston was eager for and which Dick was not at all averse to. Finally the Boreas was drawn up beside the landing and dismantled, the sails and rigging being stored in the boat-house. As Chub poetically phrased it, “The career of the good ship Boreas has been brief, but ah, how glorious!”
February was a fortnight old when the school was thrown into a fever of mild excitement by a notice posted on the bulletin board in School Hall. The notice read as follows:
It is proposed to form a Track Team, and a meeting for that purpose will be held to-morrow (Friday) afternoon in the Gym at 4:15. All fellows are earnestly requested to be present.
Roy Porter,
T. H. Eaton.
I think you could have formed most anything at Ferry Hill just then, from a Croquet Club to a Sewing Society. February is a dull time of year, and the fellows were eager for anything which promised to supply a new interest. For two weeks the rink had been unfit to play on, and the river in scarcely better condition. Ferry Hill had won the first six games of its hockey schedule, including the first contest with Hammond. The second game with the rival school had been twice postponed, and Roy was beginning to lose hope of ever being able to play it, a thing which disgusted him not a little since the team had shown itself to be an unusually good one and able, in his and the school’s estimation, to cope successfully with any hockey team in the vicinity. With skating and hockey at a standstill, base-ball practice confined only to light work in the cage, and the golf links still half a foot deep in snow, the forty-three students at Ferry Hill were ripe for any excitement. And as a result the meeting on Friday afternoon was about as well attended as it could possibly have been. Things went with a rush from the start. Roy outlined the project and introduced Dick Somes, who had hitherto remained in the background. It didn’t take Dick more than two minutes of talking to have every fellow on the edge of his chair with roseate visions of a track and field victory over Hammond floating before his eyes.
“Say, Roy,” whispered Chub, “Dick’s father is some sort of a promoter, isn’t he?”
“Yes, I think so; sells mines, doesn’t he? Why?”